John Adam

How PHEVs and EVs Will Sabotage America's Drive for Energy Independence

Every day you see articles about new ways to improve battery technology. Here are two techniques that do not involve lead or lithium.

Ultracaps Could Boost Hybrid Efficiency

Recent studies point to the potential of ultracapacitors to augment conventional batteries.

www.technologyreview.c...

Making cheaper, higher-energy batteries to store renewable energy,
www.technologyreview.c...

Electric motors are between 3 and 4 times more efficient than internal combustion engines. For over 50 years our trains have been diesel electric because they are much more energy efficient than diesel only trains which require a transmission and whose diesel engines cannot run at a constant speed for maximum efficiency like in the diesel electric system. The US Military has been replacing its diesel trucks with diesel electric trucks which use the same technique as diesel electric locomotives. These diesels running at a energy efficient constant speed are used to charge ultra capacitors which supply electricity to the electric motor. No energy wasting transmission is needed with the electric motor. No batteries are used and the trucks get between 20 and 40% better MPG than the trucks they replace.

These more efficient technologies will DEFINITELY CONTRIBUTES TO America's Drive for Energy Independence. The electric motors for cars like jet engines for planes require much less maintenance and last much longer than piston engines. If you buy a Tesla you would be a fool to sell it for the typical depreciated price of an ICE vehicle when the battery wears out. Battery technology will continue to improve at a rapid pace for many years and their price will go down and their reliability will improve. The law of supply and demand and competition for market share will insure that prediction.

Debunking PHEV Mythology

Making cheaper, higher-energy batteries to store renewable energy,
www.technologyreview.c... .

Debunking PHEV Mythology

Ultracaps Could Boost Hybrid Efficiency

Recent studies point to the potential of ultracapacitors to augment conventional batteries.

www.technologyreview.c...

Debunking PHEV Mythology

Chancer,

Popular Science did an article on the Aptera a few months ago. Here it is, ecotality.com/life/200.../ .

Debunking PHEV Mythology

John Petersen,

The Smart Grid does already exist. I am on a rural electric cooperative which has over 25,000 members with installed smart meters. My electric cooperative can turn off or on and read its meters using their computers. It also has computer systems that monitor power usage and availability on its grid.

You are discussing batteries and other storage methods to store potential and ACTUAL excess power generation. The problem is the expense to my rural cooperative and Big Utility companies like AEP associated with purchasing STORAGE CAPACITY. The solution is to use their customer's EV, PHEV, ect batteries to store excess power.

These customer batteries cost the electric utility companies nothing and become a source of profit. All the utilities need to do is modify their grid monitoring systems to ALLOW or SCHEDULE their charging when there is sufficient excess power to do so.

I worked for American Electric Power as a computer consultant and designed and developed a Distribution Outage Reporting System used by the Public Utility Systems of over a dozen states. What I am saying can be done.

You are correct that it will not happen overnight, but it would not take years to do the needed system MODIFICATIONS either. Adding the ability to SCHEDULE OPTIONAL POWER USAGE could then be rapidly added to the thousands of computes which now PARTIALLY control our ELECTRIC GRID.

SECURITY is the biggest consideration, but it can and should be done ASAP not 10 years from now when UNSCHEDULED charging of millions of large vehicle batteries using power from the electric grid could become a problem.

Debunking PHEV Mythology

Mr Petersen,

Done properly Plug-ins would be charged with electric energy which is currently going to waste 24/7. This can only be done by requesting you electric utility permission to charge. I told you this before and now Ford Motor Company is saying the same thing. Read about it here.

www.treehugger.com/fil...

This may seem like a fine point but it changes everything. Using POWER LINE COMMUNICATIONS would allow the power company to SCHEDULE your battery charging to use power generated by COAL which is now being wasted 24/7. It could also enable you to use electricity being generated by WIND OR SOLAR.

However using OTHERWISE WASTED ENERGY has the same impact as using WIND OR SOLAR OR any other non green house gas emitting electric power generation method.

About 28% of the energy we use in the USA is from petroleum for transportation. Internal combustion engines are between 3 and 4 times less efficient than electric motors. That means that it would take between 7 to 9% of the energy we use in the form of electricity to do the same thing. We currently waste tremendous amounts of the electricity we generate. Computer monitoring and control could reduce that significantly. We do it everywhere else.

That is the meaning of the SMART GRID!!!

Why Advanced Lead-Acid Batteries Will Dominate HEV Markets

John Petersen,

I believe that you have said that the design of the GM Volt power train makes sense to you. Remember the Volt uses a small ICE running at optimum speed to charge its batteries, has no transmission or drive shaft, and uses only the electric motor to move. That makes your suggested weight and size comparison between Advanced Lead-acid and Lithium Batteries meaningless in the case of the Volt.

The Volt uses the space where the transmission and drive shaft for other vehicles reside to house its large battery pack. The Lithium Battery it is going to use is about twice as large as needed to go its advertised 40 mile battery range because Lithium batteries do not last long when discharged over 50%. Therefore an Advanced Lead-Acid battery would only need to have half the capacity of its proposed Lithium battery. There would also be less heavy shielding needed to protect passengers from potential Lithium battery explosions.

I also doubt that your 821 pound advantage for lithium over advanced lead could be true considering the current claims of Firefly, news.cnet.com/8301-107... . That weight advantage would only make sense when comparing it to the old batteries I have in my pickup trucks.

Long Live the Cleantech Revolution

John, I am not a big fan of GM. I drive an Acura CL which is great. I drove a Honda Prelude for 16 years before that I owned a 190 SL, another great handling car. However I also owned a 1969 Corvair and I consider it the best handling GM vehicle ever. Only the 1959 and some 1960 Corvairs had poor suspensions which closely resembled that of the VW Beetle. GM obviously can learn from its mistakes and make a great product.

At one time there were conversion kits to replace the corvair engine with a small V8 and with that setup you could out handle anything and go about 200 miles an hour. The Corvette was an overweight pig with a pickup transmission compared to it. GM can make a great product if the bean counters that run the company get out of the way of their engineers.

Long Live the Cleantech Revolution

The Volt has a 16kwh battery pack and The price for it seems to be around $8,000. Now at $250/kWh it would be $4,000. Is that an attractive price with $2 a gallon gasoline? It would be for me because gasoline will soon be back to $5 and beyond unless we start replacing millions of ICE powered vehicles with electric powered vehicles. Of course if we did the price of gasoline would fall and perhaps stabilize at less than $2, so what. If we continue to depend only on ICE vehicles there will be no limit to the price of gasoline, diesel, and oil!

Long Live the Cleantech Revolution

John,

That Green Car Congress does not even refer to an EREV which is nothing like a PHEV. A PHEV has a standard ICE drive train which includes a transmission. The Volt EREV ICE runs at a constant speed that optimizes its economy while charging the battery pack.

The article states <<nearly 50% of US passenger vehicle miles are traveled by vehicles driving less than 20 miles per day.>> . What does nearly actually mean? Now in Ohio (like most of the non costal continental USA) we have urban sprawl and almost nobody has a work commute of less than 20 miles per day. Now it is true that before or current depression idiots living out in our boondocks would drive 10 miles to buy a loaf of bread or milk a few times a week, but better planning has mostly ended such stupidity.

Now personally it seems clear to me that the Volt batter pack could be sold with different amounts of its total capacity being populated. The totally populated battery pack costs $8,000, so cut the price 75% to $2,000 and you get what you and this article seem to think people would want. The Volt computer could be easily made driver programmable to change its range before the ICE starts to be anywhere from 0 to 40 miles. Flexibility should be the rule when possible.

Long Live the Cleantech Revolution

John,

It does appear that the Volt battery temperature control is done by software interpreting what to do according to the battery temperature,
gm-volt.com/2009/01/05.../ .

So I see no reason that a simple software change would not allow you to use an advanced lead acid battery instead of the Li it uses now. The 40 mile range on battery would have gotten me to work and back for the last 30 years. The same could be said for almost everyone I know.

As you well know, the Extended Range EV concept used by the Volt has a huge advantage because the ICE runs at a constant speed and only charges the battery after a trip goes over 40 miles. Throwing away the transmission is a huge cost and MPG advantage.

When the Volt goes into production the other auto makers will also soon ditch their transmissions to convert their PHEVs to EREVs. The problem now is that companies have spent so much on developing better transmissions that politics and old habits are getting in the way. Honda, Toyota and Ford may not be addicted to Li and using advanced lead batteries instead wiIl make the conversion easy.

Why Pure Play Energy Storage Companies Could Double for Investors

Given Obama's message of change with new solutions I think they are looking at funding new technology not old failing ideas.

DOE Secretary Chu Announces Changes to Expedite Economic Recovery Funding
Restructuring will lead to new investments in energy projects within months

www.energy.gov/news200...

Why Pure Play Energy Storage Companies Could Double for Investors

John Petersen,

I do not doubt that: << When you look at batteries that are currently being produced, the best anybody is doing is an ultra fine grind. >>. However, things are changing faster and faster every day. This has been a fact of life for over 50 years. Since the advent of cheap computers and then the Internet and WWW investing in yesterday’s technology has been a big problem. I want to know where the companies you post on your charts are pursuing new technology before I invest. There are IPO’s but I would prefer investing in established companies that adopt cutting edge technology and can ramp up production using all of this “Government Money” which is provided by American Taxpayers. McCain and Obama are not talking about supporting and funding current technology.

Why Pure Play Energy Storage Companies Could Double for Investors

John Petersen,

Because of the Lithium battery overheating and fire problem, I actually considered the point you make: << the Volt must have power control circuits that are perfectly matched to the batteries the car will use>>. However I doubt that this power control is “hard wired”. A software modification could get around this problem. Even if chip software is not modifiable, in large production numbers, a replacement chip should not be very expensive.

On the topic of nanotechnology, the link I provided did not talk about grinding anything really fine. The economic construction of devices using nano technology including batteries and ultra-capacitors is the big problem. Grinding is a no brainer. The articles that I read talk about growing nanotubes etc not grinding. They mention encasing Lithium in carbon fullerenes, nanotubes etc to prevent expansion and heating problems. They mention the higher electrical conductivity of carbon nanotubes etc to speed charging and discharging. There may have been mostly grinding going on a few years ago, but that was yesterday.

Why Pure Play Energy Storage Companies Could Double for Investors

John Petersen,

Consider what you said: <<While commenters consistently tell me that battery prices will plummet, nobody has ever explained where the fabled "economies of scale" are going to come from.>> Of course I am no Prophet willing to be stoned for a bad prophecy, but energy storage using nanotechnology is still in its infancy and growing at a truly astonishing pace. Every day I find something new being tried like a battery using both super capacitor and old lead acid technology. Why they did not use advanced lead acid is a mystery to me. Now I see something like this every day on the Technology Review email news, www.technologyreview.c.../ .

New technology is "where the fabled "economies of scale" are going to come from.". Very likely it will be nano-technology.